Morning Links: Tuskegee Airmen greet Ride 2 Recovery, Garden Grove opens streets, and stupid criminal tricks

 
Local

Over 200 riders, many vets recovering from serious injuries, completed the 450 mile UnitedHealthcare Ride 2 Recovery. And were joined by two of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen at the finish.

Boyonabike says it’s time for Pasadena to do more to make the streets safer for cyclists, because the three-foot law isn’t enough.

 

State

Garden Grove hosts its first Open Streets event, the second in Orange County in just two weeks; Bike Newport Beach calls it a smashing success.

A San Diego cyclist is seriously injured in a Sunday morning hit-and-run.

A very tongue-in-cheek San Jose letter writer complains that thoughtless bike riders add as much as 20 seconds to his daily commute. And keep reading for a typical windshield perspective comment from a county deputy.

 

National

A writer for the Business Insider explains what Americans don’t understand about bicycling, and why the US needs to copy the top bike cities in Europe.

Bicycling offers advice on how to deal with aggressive dogs. In my experience, the best approach is to give them an order to sit or go home in a loud, firm voice. Dogs are trained to respond to commands, so they’ll usually obey at least long enough to make your getaway.

A New York cyclist tells drivers not to be hypocrites in complaining about cyclists, because everyone in New York breaks traffic law. Meanwhile, the Times says everyone on the streets menaces everyone else.

A West Virginia letter writer complains about lost revenue from parking meters removed to make way for an under used bike lane.

Instead of building bikeways, Newport News decides to widen sidewalks for riders and walkers to share; never mind that sidewalk riding is more dangerous than riding in the street.

Nice. A South Carolina bicycling group pitches in to buy a three-wheeled tandem so a long-time member suffering from ALS can continue to ride with them.

 

International

A Canadian cyclist gets his $5000 stolen bike back, even if it cost him $400 to do it.

A UK engineer develops a lock to prevent the theft of quick release wheels.

An Aussie paper says the solution to scofflaw cyclists is properly designed, connected infrastructure.

 

Finally…

Stupid criminal tricks: A suspected Brit bike thief drowns after riding into a harbor to escape the police in a case of instant karma. If you have an outstanding warrant and carrying concealed weapons, put a damn headlight on your bike.

And if you’re planning to make your getaway by bike, wear glasses so a bystander can’t spray something into your eyes and you won’t ride into a police cruiser.

 

3 comments

  1. james says:

    Newpot Beach’s traffic engineers are using the argument that this will improve the “performance” of the road and reduce pollution because slowing to pass pedestrians or cyclists is bad for the environment. What else would one expect from Newport Beach, a tacky little McMonaco on the pacfic for upscale white trash princesses?

    Nearby Costa Mesa, has a good amount of sidewalk bikelanes. These were probably designed to help improve the “performance” of the nearby urban highways and rationalized using the same pseudo-environmental talking points. These are, of course, nothing more than sidewalks with a bit of reflective tape installed and contain not a single piece of engineering designed to reduce the likelyhood of being hit when riding in the many crosswalks you have to cross to get anywhere. Naturally, you have to press a pedestrian beg button to cross each of the many crosswalks and yield to right turning motorists who are unaware of anything to their right.

    This reminds me, I had the misfortune of being in Costa Mesa the other day and came across the worst designed bike lanes I have ever seen. This a street designed to promote dooring and right hook collisions and is a major fuck you to cyclists. It is a residential street that could have easily been traffic calmed and made less-dangerous for all modes but was instead re-designed to get cyclists out of the way of motorists so they can drive faster. The bike lanes are designed to set you on a collision course with sideview mirrors. The intersection landscaping is seemingly designed to hide cyclists from motorists and give you the impression that a cyclist should hug the curb and yield to a right turning car. I imagine that the mayor lives on the street and got tired of having to slow down and overtake cyclists. He called up the local DOT and told them to “get them cyclists out of my way” and they obliged.

  2. Mark Elliot says:

    The one road rule that should be respected by riders as well as drivers is one-way flow. Riders in NYC who blast down a bike lane on a one way against the flow not only beg for a ped collision, they do a disservice to those advocating for pro-bike improvements. That malarkey will eventually turn the non-riding public against riders.

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